


When the World Doesn't End

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Series: I Want Another First Kiss [19]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Dreams vs. Reality, End of the World, Engagement, Episode: s05e22 The Gift, F/M, First Kiss, Marriage Proposal, POV Male Character, POV Second Person, Present Tense, Subtext, What Doesn't Kill You Can Still Seriously Mess You Up, flight of ideas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 13:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A first kiss Xander couldn't give Buffy at the end of season five, when there was nothing anyone could do. (5 of 7)</p><p>[Xander's point of view on not announcing his engagement to Anya while Buffy is dead]</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the World Doesn't End

“Give it to me when the world doesn't end,” Anya says. So you kiss and hug her until all that stuff you just made up ten seconds ago about being sure it wouldn't sounds a lot less like bullshit. A lot less like you just wanted her to put on the ring because it's 1945 and this is the bunker and... okay, bad analogy, but just for the few more hours until the world ended, you needed what should have been true to be true. You wanted her to die with your ring on her finger.

~~~~

The ring is still in your pocket. While you watch. The ring is in your pocket, and Anya is in your arms. Buffy doesn't fall in slow motion, but it feels like she does. The agony is that drawn out. When she lands there's a little bounce and in that moment the breath leaves you and you think of something you heard once about people who jump from sky scrapers, how they don't really splat right when they land, how in slow motion you can see that they bounce and then explode. Buffy does not explode, and without knowing when it started, you are breathing again.

~~~~~

Days and nights crawl by. Spring becomes the past and now is suddenly summer. The ring is still in your pocket. The pocket, which is part of a jacket that hangs on a chair while you sleep, waiting. Anya is in your arms, except that in this dream she's not. In this dream you're kneeling. The wreckage of the tower lies all around, and in some nonspecificly happy way, everything has been resolved, because Dawn is here and smiling and Glory is not. Everyone is smiling. Even Anya smiles as Buffy looks down into your eyes and you up into hers as you slide the ring onto her finger.  Everyone can see that this is right. As she bends down and you rise to meet her, to claim with your kiss what she has at long last freely given—you wake. Anya is in your arms. The ring is still in your pocket. And, it seems, the world ended after all.

 


End file.
